I am about eighty pages into Through The Arc of the Rain Forest, and so far I find the novel quite captivating. Upon starting the novel, I was unsure at how these insanely random characters and their strange eccentricities would unite to form a cohesive plot; but now I am starting to see where Yamashita may be going with this novel. Yamashita’s writing style is easily read but thematically dense. The main theme I’ve noticed thus far is the beauty in being strange or different. Each of the main characters has something that would be conventionally considered a strange eccentricity (head satellite, third arm, feather obsession); however, these characters are slowly becoming rich and famous from these embraced eccentricities. What’s more interesting is the ways in which society is intrigued and inspired by these stories. The main characters even help to inspire each other. For example, Kazumasa is pushed to discover his own luck through the encouragement of Lourdes
I remember that this particular trend was discussed briefly in class and I find it an extremely intriguing topic to think about. Normally somebody with a ball perpetually floating in front of his head or somebody with a third arm would have been ridiculed by almost everybody, whether publicly or privately, and their life would have been made much harder due to what people perceive to be a deformity or a grotesque oddity. Although the world of Through the Arc of the Rainforest is seemingly quite similar to ours (minus the fact that it's in Brazil), it's dramatically different in that, like you said, these characters with such bizarre characteristics are completely accepted, even embraced and treasured, for being who they are. The truth is, in our world it'll either be impossible or take a very long time for everybody to achieve that same nondiscriminating state of mind where nobody judges and degrades others based on their appearance. It's certainly a very interesting world to imagine, and is in my eyes another subtle way that Yamashita manages to combine the real with the imaginary.
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